Witch's Skin

Witch's Skin

  by Rik Hunik

  A slightly different version of this story appeared in Tales Of The Talisman, Vol.4 #4, Apr. 2009

  Copyright 2013 by Rik Hunik

  Chapter 1

  “That’s the last of them,” Suzi muttered to herself as she set a handful of old National Geographic magazines on top of a tall stack leaning against a wall, beside more than a dozen similar, distinctive yellow stacks. Already on her knees, she wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand and leaned way down to look into the bottom shelf of the ceiling-high bookshelf she had just emptied. Yes, there were words written in white chalk on the back of that shelf too. “To even the score.”

  She frowned in confusion, then stood up to read the line on the back of each shelf in turn, down from the top. “The right/ To fight/ Is yours./ To win at this game/ Remember your name./ Step through the door/ To even the score.” It still didn’t make much sense.

  She straightened, rolled her shoulders, shook her hands loose, braced her feet, leaned her shoulder against one end of the bookshelf and pushed. Relieved of hundreds of pounds of slick paper the bookshelf easily pivoted on one corner and swung away from the wall.

  “Yes,” Suzi called out in triumph as the bare, overhead light shone on a crude, plywood door.

  She had inherited this big, old, country house from a distant cousin she hadn’t known about, but apparently he read and liked her magazine articles and wanted to help her. It was just what she needed; with no mortgage or high city rent to pay she earned enough money from her magazine writing to do what she really wanted to do; start writing novels.

  Ever since she had moved into the house a couple of months ago she had suspected that the length of the rooms on this side of the attic didn’t add up to the length of the house. Attics usually gave her the creeps but today was a bright, sunny day and a sudden itch of curiosity had compelled her to explore despite her qualms.

  There was no knob or lock on the door so Suzi had to slide her finger into a slot to unhook a latch. “Yuck,” she said as she withdrew her finger, stained black with some kind of old grease and years of dust. She brought it close to her nose and sniffed. Very faint, but definitely there, the smell licorice. Weird. She wiped her finger clean on her jeans and pushed the door open. It swung about ninety-two degrees and bumped the wall. A string hung down in front of her face. She pulled on it and a dim, dusty, incandescent bulb filled the room with its yellow light.

  The room was only four feet wide and less than eight feet long, with shelves along one wall holding a variety of boxes. At the far end, where the ceiling slanted down to meet the wall, was a makeshift, built-in desk of plywood and two-by-fours. Clippings and photographs from newspapers and magazines were taped to the walls. As a writer herself Suzi's first urge was to examine the clippings, but something turned her attention to the shelves instead.

  Right at eye level, sticking out from under the lid of a small, cardboard shoe box, she saw the corner of a twenty dollar bill. “What’s this?” she asked herself as she pulled the box off the shelf and flipped open the lid, snorting in disgust when when saw that the box was half full of nothing but newspaper; the bill had been carefully taped in place as a lure.

  Three steel ball bearings that had been held back by the box rumbled lightly as they rolled off the end of the shelf, dropping with a loud, one-two-three crash of breaking glass.

  Suzi jumped at the sound and looked down into a larger box on a lower shelf, where the falling bearings had smashed the one gallon jar standing there. The jar had been full of water, which soaked down into the contents of the box. “Ooooo, what’s this?” It looked like some kind of exotic cloth and Suzi was afraid the water had ruined it, but when she touched it she felt soft, fresh leather. It had been folded back and forth, like an accordion, rather than doubled over and over.

  When she picked it up it seemed to move in her hands, sliding through her fingers and unfolding, spilling down, feeling like her lover’s touch wherever it brushed her skin, sensual, exciting, electrifying. She held the length of it against herself and ran her hand down it, just to experience the delicious feeling and the passions it aroused in her.

  It looked like a garment of some kind, a robe with sleeves and a hood. She just had to try it on, she simply had to feel that delightful sensation over very inch of her skin. In a sudden frenzy, not thinking about what she was doing, she stepped out of her shoes and stripped off all her clothes, without once relinquishing her hold on the robe.

  The thing had sleeves so she put her arms into them, experiencing a warm rush as she slid her hands all the way into the gloves at the end. Her arms tingled most pleasantly. While she relaxed into the pleasure of the sensation something slid over her mind from behind, like she was a glove, and made her move. Suzi tried to resist but she had no control.

  “Take a back seat, dearie, I’m driving now,” said a voice in her head.